As the World Cup returns to Australia-New Zealand after 23 years, MEENAKSHI RAO tells you how things have changed not just for cricket but also for the perceptions, opinions and monies around it
It was 1992. Australia was rocking to Violent Femmes and Nirvana. An incensed Kerry Packer, disgusted with the X-rated content on his Channel Nine, had made only non-cricket news, scrapping Australia’s Naughtiest midway on phone. Prime Minister Paul Keating had been branded the “lizard of Oz” for putting his hand on Queen Elizabeth II’s back. The Redfern Speech, in which the aborigines were promised their due and acknowledged for the first time by an Australian Government, had just happened to a stunned white society and “profitable Asiafication” of Oz was emerging as the most contested buzzword of an Australian society ridden with Americanisation, Europisation, unemployment, recession and depression.
It was also the year that Allan Border’s 11, champions of the 1987 World Cup, were to emerge messy and ineffective. Tom Moody, back then, was not a legendary thinker-coach but one among the ‘mates’, the reed-thin Bruce Reid being a part of the fabled Aussie arm muscle and Sean Abbot to be born seven days into the World Cup. Australia not reaching the semi-final signalled the ‘slow browning’ of cricket at MCG to match up with a much bigger “brown effect” on Australian society in its economics and politics at Canberra. As Pakistan won the World Cup on the field, Keating took his be-buy-Asian-policy forward off it.
The convulsions, on hindsight positive, were not limited just to Aussie politics, foreign policy, health sector and immigration shifts. It was a leap year in the true sense of the term — with cricket no longer considering a jump away from traditional format a silly point of the gentleman’s game, and the population, at large, coming to terms with the massive potential of India, China and Indonesia as opposed to Japan, America, Britain and the rest of progressed Europe.
It was the year that the World Cup got the colour in its jerseys for the first time, went under the floodlights for the first time, dabbled in fielding restrictions for the first time, played with white balls for the first time and brought back the Apartheid-tainted South Africans to the fold, well, for the very first time. Australia then was a strange mix of woes and change. Economic slide competed with torrential rains that deluged New South Wales, particularly Sydney, causing all round havoc in life and cricket. India’s World Cup match against Sri lanka was washed out and at least two others of the league stage rain-reduced, including the one in which Azharuddin’s boys lost to Australia by just one run!
Besides, even though we Indians know the Aussies primarily through their aggressive, ruthless, professional, must-win and sledge-hammer cricket, they have long loved their football and rugby more. An evidence of this is 1992 itself when 43 footballers were born as opposed to just four, who would later be cricketers.
The trend has only grown over the last 23 years that the World Cup has taken to return to Australia and New Zealand. Today’s Aussies have gotten too busy with business to take in any game of any long format — be it lazy golfing or day-long 50-over ODIs. They are a family conscious, health conscious and time conscious generation promoting their education, iron ore, soccer, medicine and tourism more than their cricket.
Otherwise, who would have thought that in 1999, the Australian Government would choose a slain heart surgeon as their Man of the Century over cricket’s magic maestro Don BradmanIJ Who would have thought of empty stands and Cricket Australia experiencing some funds issues despite being the most professional Cricket Board in the worldIJ
However, today’s Australia has bounced back from those grim days of 1992, again both on and off the field. It has won four World Cup titles, three in a row after 1992, has gotten over its transitory phase of generational change, is at the helm of aggression and all set to emulate India in winning the World Cup on home ground. Out of the stadia, its policies are diligently ‘Asia and China positive’ and it has emerged as one of the world’s most picturesque economic powers to contend with.
Even New Zealand, the much revived and pumped up co-host which was a proud semi-finalist in 1992, is all set with dreams (not totally wild) of reaching the MCG this time round on March 29. From 1992 to 2015, Australia’s trans-Tasman rival has emerged from its essentially centrally controlled wool, sheep and agriculture economy to a liberal market with tourism as its top potential. However, where its sport is concerned, its cricket is yet to unseat rugby from prime position, something that a victory in this World Cup may well alter.
India, on the other hand, is in the unenvious position of being the defending champion on a turf that has been its Himalayan obstacle to victory, with a team that has lost its experience, with a bowling department that is in tatters, with a dressing room which is visibly suppressing undercurrents of rift, with a skipper who may have eroded his authority and with a history that has a record of not winning anything Down Under.
In that sense, not much has changed over the two decades for India’s campaigns in the Oceana. In 1992, winability was an issue but least expected and the lack of it easily forgiven. In 2015, winability continues to be an issue but with expectations that have increased much like the clout of the Indian Cricket Board and with public tolerance to defeat getting belligerent.
In 1992, there were just the newspapers to disseminate public opinion on cricket. Today, there is Facebook, Twitter and what not! Public opinion is on the superhighway of being instant, all pervasive and hence on a crescendo much before Team India even begins its campaign in the middle on February 15, against Pakistan at Adelaide.
The betting market has since downgraded India to 4th on the odds of the global meter despite the ICC choosing a format in which the Men in Blue look well protected to reach at least the quarter-final if, that is, they don’t slip against the three minnows and win at least one match against Pakistan, South Africa or West Indies.
The group stage though is tediously protracted, stretching over one month with just six games for each team. India, for example, will play its six group games in between long, unsettling breaks after starting off with Pakistan at Adelaide on February 15, South Africa on February 22 (a gap of six days), UAE on February 28 (again a gap of six days), West Indies on March 6 (a gap of six days), Ireland on March 10 (four days) and Zimbabwe on March 14 (a gap of four days) over five very far removed cities in two far removed countries.
Considering that our Indian boys may be already homesick and fatigued by constant defeat and injuries, having been Down Under already for three months, the bad signs outnumber the good ones by a boundary. Nevertheless, the Indians are still hot property and it’s the India-Pakistan match that got sold out the fastest, it is Adelaide that has no room for last-minute guests and it was the Indian fans who signalled the sold out season of cricket in Australia when the firecrackers exploded over Christchurch at the February 12 opening ceremony.
You could well thank Keating’s 1992 Asia policy that has today bloomed into Indians emerging as the second largest immigrant and student population in Australia after China, many of whom will be in the stands a day after Valentine’s Day, professing their love for the Dhoni-Kohli-Rohit troika with such tempestuous zeal that could temporarily make the skipper forget his existential blues.
One could add to this, skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s one-team-no-press policy, proven magical in the past, much like Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s would you sayIJ Moreover, this one is, on all accounts, Dhoni’s last World Cup as skipper and player, something he is unlikely to let go off cheaply despite the handicap of leading a young, under confident and inexperienced squad. So, underestimating his midas touch would be as wrong as, say, playing down the bounce on the pitch at Perth even though both are much flattened for the occasion.
And, even as the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 is doing its best to look good and perform well, niggles are all too evident to be ignored. Yes, the prize money has gone up by 20 per cent from the earlier edition, to $10 million, and affiliates have been given room, the long distances across the Australian Outback and the Kiwi expanse are raising concerns of listlessness among contenders.
The World Cup, which started with just eight teams and 15 matches in 1975 in England — the only country that could stitch up the funds for the inaugural event — has expanded so much that some call it an elongation beyond repair. It was an obese 54 matches with 14 teams in 2003 for Caribbean Cup. This time too, it is a prolonged affair causing many eyebrows to crease over the fatigue factor around the 48 matches to be played before reaching the final at MCG. In between, it has travelled to England four times, India thrice, South Africa once and West Indies once.
In between, cricket has changed too — from being a luxuriating gentleman’s game over five days, to becoming pacey with one-dayers, to respecting shrinking attention span to come down to 20-over cricket, to pulsating as an evening entertainer with the showbiz and chutzpah marinating a money spinning domestic league.
Over the years, it has been swayed by the glitz, glamour and timeline of football, donning the veneer of the beautiful game without really catching its reach. As the latest edition opens Down Under, the ICC focus is on how to keep the 50-over game going and viable when the much younger, shorter and slicker 20-over format is aggressively inside the house for a complete takeover.